When I was in college, I started every day with two Marys. The first was a Hail Mary, a round of prayer I offered up like the proper Catholic-Buddhist young woman my parents had taught me to be. The second was the 2007 Mary J. Blige track “Just Fine,” which I’d blast while carefully applying my lip tint and that third coat of Maybelline’s Great Lash mascara. There was something about her voice that soothed me as I begrudgingly plucked away my chin stubbles. Before the track ended, anything manly was gone, tweaked and tucked away. Welcome to my stealth life.
Back then, my Thai-Chinese parents’ only hope was for me to graduate with top honors. Mine was to never get clocked as trans. Being stealth gave me the protection I needed to survive the violence of systemic oppression. It was like wearing an invisibility cloak that stopped strangers at the mall from harassing me and kept my dates from swinging their fists at my cheekbones. It also allowed my parents to introduce me to their friends as their “daughter” without stuttering mid-sentence. I was femme. I was fishy. I was fierce. Most importantly, it kept me alive. I might not be writing this to you now if I hadn’t made that choice.
Living stealth also afforded me the privilege to pass. I could go outside without keeping one hand on the pocket knife in my purse. I could walk a little taller and make eye contact with strangers without worrying that a fetishizing curiosity lay behind their smiles. When I woke up in the middle of the night, the thoughts that ran through my mind shifted from “Do I talk to my parents or siblings first about which of my friends to call if I go missing?” to “Should I wear red or pink lipstick to look more femme?”
My trans friends from home were telling me that I was living my best life. A part of me knew that I was living my best lie, but authenticity seemed less important than ensuring I could get home safely to hug my grandmother at the end of the day. For a time, I liked how that cloak of invisibility looked on me. It made me feel safe — at least until I had to show my government ID card, which still has my legal, male-gendered name on it.
I want to be very clear, especially for any trans folks reading this, that there is no shame in living stealth, especially when your intersecting identities make you a visible target for transphobia. Your survival is valid. Your transness is valid. And both remain valid no matter the extent to which you let the world witness your brilliance. For me, though, I realized that I wasn’t living for myself when I was stealth. All through my high school and college years, my friends were figuring out their internships, preparing for job interviews, and dreaming about their future careers. I didn’t know what else to live for besides looking like a “real woman.”
Survival of the stealthest had become my all-consuming pursuit.
After college, a preschool special education teaching position found me and I loved it. I went by my female-identifying name — Nadha — instead of my legal name. I looked fabulous in my below-the-knee pencil skirt paired with kitten heels. I felt stealth-phoria teaching my preschoolers. Little did I know that I was about to get schooled. One morning, I was sitting on the floor spinning leaves with one of my five-year-old students. Without saying a word, he looked me deep in my eyes and scooted to sit closer. In that shared silence, there was nothing to do and nothing to improve, perfect, or teach. The student-teacher dynamic blurred. I felt a rush of warmth around my chest as I suddenly began to see the world through my preschoolers’ eyes.
The curiosity these children exuded inspired me to wonder who I was beyond being stealth. Before my preschoolers opened my eyes and my heart, I didn’t realize I was shrinking myself so much that my existence was entirely for other people’s comfort. Blending in to belong, I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn’t see my own soul. After that day, I started asking myself new questions. Who could Nat be? Not that woman, Nat. Not that “Ka-Teoy” (a Thai term people called me; an equivalent of “ladyboy”) Nat. Just Nat.
Soon I began exploring different gender expressions and my identity beyond the binary. I buzzed my hair. I wore the combat boots from my mandatory military service with a floral Y2K slip dress. I said “so what?” as often as I said “thank you.”
These transformations brewed a new kind of freedom, one that allowed me to move in and out of the gender binary boxes instead of hyper vigilantly keeping myself in the “real woman” box to survive. With my passing privilege still intact, I felt for the first time in my life that I could swap out my invisibility cloak for my 1940s satin-lined cape once in a while.
What’s more, I quietly became more vocal about my trans identity. I literally whispered “I’m trans, too” to my then-burlesque mother and now best friend. She looked at me, hands covering her glittered lips. We were gagging at each other. Underneath all that laughter we shared, I would never forget how amazing it felt to be seen — like seen, seen — by those I loved. Her glowing gaze and warm embrace allowed me to look at myself in the mirror with the same self-love. The protection of passing, I realized, wasn’t the only kind of joy I could feel.
I slowly came to love parts of myself that had been covered up by my trusted invisibility cloak. I reclaimed a wider range of pursuits and pleasures, like baking and cooking; I leaned into how quirky I was when I sang to my house plants and hamsters (named Dolce and Gabbana, of course); I embraced how nerdy I could be when someone asked me about Mortal Kombat.
Now I introduce myself to others starting with my name, my pronouns, my ancestors and land, the things I love, the work I do, and then my trans identity. Although I no longer whisper about my transness, I beam every time people refer to me using she/her pronouns. I don’t think that will ever get old.
Stealth is a strategy, not an identity, as we trans folks are so much more than our methods of survival in a hostile, fear-stricken world. The bruises on my face have long since healed, but the fracture in my soul from all the contorting, conforming, and performing for the gender binary is still a work in progress. I still listen to Mary J. Blige in the morning, and my passing privilege still gives me that stealth edge. But in the safety of my stealth-ness, and with a bit more of the wisdom that comes with age, I no longer shrink myself for others’ comfort. Now I put that invisibility cloak over my shame and internalized transphobia instead. And when I want to step out of stealth, I can choose to speak openly about my identity.
Still here and still sometimes stealth, I choose to live as I honor the lives of my trans kins who joined the ancestors too soon. I choose to take up space as I embody the entirety of the gender spectrum. I choose to be stealth rather than letting stealth become all of me. I am still femme. I am still fishy. I am still fierce. Most importantly, I’m not just alive. I’m me.
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